03-03-2003 11:44 AM
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Welcome to Paradise

Despite perpetual feelinsg of being totally exhausted, the last few days have pretty much rocked. Dirty South Improv Festival was this week, and while I had to miss more of the shows than I wanted to miss, I did get a chance to see some good groups, a great bat by the DSI instructors, and old friends.

I didn’t get to see WIT, which was a drag because I had a secret evaluative mission. In fact, I don’t think I ever met anyone in WIT at any point throughout the weekend.

I also didn’t end up coaching because I was supposed to work with the Haverford/Bryn Mawr group, but they took off early. So I slept in on Sunday, which I desperately needed. In the end, I felt like I got workshops and shows for free and all I had to do in exchange was show up for one catered lunch to get implosion! off the ground. That’s easy living right there.

I spent yesterday offline, recuperating from the whole thing. Heidi and I stayed in, watched Sopranos episodes and two movies (if you have not seen Orange County then you really should plan not to), did a fat lot of nothing.

Bryan has three fish in the 180,000,000,000 gallon fishtank. It looks funny. He has to go under the house and put a jack down there so that the floor won’t collapse. Awesome.

03-03-2003 06:00 PM
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You Make Me Complete

Best quote of my day:

“I literally died and came back to life all in a second.”
–Matt Pack, on watching an awesome response to a scene inititation

I love it when people are pumped about improv. I’m pumped about improv. I put out another feeler for some people to come together as a longform team, and Zach and I talked implosion and DSI for about an hour. DSIF got me pumped. I want Chapel Hill, NC, to be an awesome improv mecca. And after this weekend, I believe it can be.

03-05-2003 06:06 PM
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Dave’s Been a Mess Since Cheryl Left

OK, my best news (though I think there’s plenty) can be spelled with eight letters:
J-E-N-N-I-N-G-S.

Yup, Scott Jennings is coming into town. He’s slated to sit in for Billy Cockrock on the LEARN NC help desk for our show on Friday night, and he’ll be coaching the first meeting of the new longform practice group. I think he’s interested in making coaching down here a somewhat regular occurrence, which would be stellar. Super-awesome.

The group added an eighth member today– young Mr. Cochran himself is down for some work. He’s like me– dying for some direction. So, the roster as of today is: me, Cockrock, Jen O’Bryan, Lil G, CeCe Garcia, Olivia Henderson, Mike Gold, and Andrew Dunkle. A nice mix! Yay!

Insert more feelings of being super-pumped about improv, esp. as pertains to Chapel Hill.

Work has been amazingly busy. I guess that’s cool, though it’s cutting into my online social life, which is intolerable. Intolerable, I say! But it’s good, in that I feel like I’m doing a lot, and doing it well, and I’m generally pretty happy doing it. It makes me feel energized for silly things, like filming more of the Suburbanites, and playing a ComedySportz show Saturday night because it’s my favorite ten-year-old’s birthday and she asked if I would be there.

03-06-2003 04:52 PM
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Fuck-All for Samples

I am so glad that my presentation on how to effectively present is over. I was going to beat the holy living shit out of someone if it didn’t get done soon.

Though I hated planning for it, I think that it was a big hit with the teachers who were there. I got more comments on that than I had on just about anything I’d ever done at one of those laem technology conferences. (I hate those things, because I feel like they just end up being 2-day social gatherings for higher-ups in schools, and they rarely come back with something they can implement and sustain.)

03-07-2003 06:10 PM
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They Had a Good Start Under the King and Queen of Siam

Can Scott Jennings survive Mike Flanagan? We will find out tonight, when Jennings stoops to yelling, “GO WILD!” for the sake of a bit. Jennings: big, loud, committed, smart, but dispassionate about the game. Flanagan: big, loud, committed, smart, and completely passionate about the game. Should be fun. I’m super-excited, waiting for Scott to arrive now. If they wrestle, I got my $17 worth!

I had a presentation at 7-fucking-30 in the morning today. I can understand being at work that early, but Jesus, presentations at 7:30 are inhumane.

Go HELP DESK!

03-07-2003 06:17 PM
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Drokk It!

Ack, double posted. DSL fluky. Poop.

03-09-2003 11:53 PM
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Who’s Got the Brain of JFK?

Jennings is an evil freaking genius. His play in Friday night’s help desk show was masterful. His coaching was kick-ass. He was worried that he would be rusty. My ass. He was the ideal houseguest, a great person to bounce ideas off of, and a true gentleman the whole time, except when he was being evil.

I’m stoked. I feel like this is the beginning of a fantastic new phase for… something. The scene around here. I made a list tonight, Terry Jinn-style, of all the teams that have had a run at the ZYGOTE.

The Canes beat the Wild Friday night, making it two shutouts in two nights. And Carolina beat Dook, which seemed impossible this afternoon. Hope springs eternal.

03-10-2003 11:15 PM
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So Many Days Just Staring at the Haze

I had a dream last night.

[dream] I am on the roof of a house, I think it is mine. I am re-doing the shingles, and as I take the shingles off, I find that the very top of the roof has separated, and the house is falling apart. I ask for a nail, and am handed one by some of the high school league kids from the ComedyWorx club. I put one nail in the highest point of the house, and am satisfied that this will fix the falling-apart house. It does not; the house continues to fall apart. I ask for five more, I nail them in, and the house is stable for a little while longer. But I know it will not last.

I climb a ladder downstairs and take a break, but I realize that I have to go back up to the roof– the house needs more repairing. I am about to climb the ladder when Philip Boyne tells me to climb the hill next to the house. I climb up a moss-covered hill that is as high as the roof, but when I get to the top, my foot digs into the hill, and I realize that it is a mountain of shit. I think it is a compost hill in truth, a recycling effort, but in my mind it registers only as shit. I yell down to the kids that it is a mountain of shit that they have sent me up, but they yell back that I need to stay up there; the house is falling apart and they expect me to fix it. [/dream]

I wake up at 7:36 AM and have to use the bathroom.

I will no longer seek to fix the house. I am ready to build a new one, even if it ends up like Dan Schwankl’s Chatham county hut; two stories but thin and muddy, the most that Chatham county will allow without a building permit.

03-31-2003 05:17 PM
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Whatever You Do, Don’t Tell Anyone

*gasp for air*

I took a couple of weeks away from Before I Sputter Out. I had some things that I needed to say and I couldn’t put them in this journal. And that sucked. So I don’t know that it serves its initial purpose anymore. But it does have some purpose, I think. I’ve been feeling down today… and that seems to be happening during the day every so often.

A lot of it has to do with being mid-master-plan. I’d like to be at the end, which is to say that I am basically feeling lazy and I want improv utopia without doing the work. The truth is that I’d love to be doing the improv work, just not the shitwork.

So, what didn’t I chronicle?

Heidi and I went to NYC and didn’t enjoy ourselves. We didn’t do what either of us wanted to do and were so selfish that we each made the other miserable. It cast such a shadow that I didn’t get a chance to really enjoy the company of friends and of strangers.

I’m doing the sound design for the next play at Deep Dish Theater, Lobby Hero. The first production meeting was Thursday.

A bunch of people have cancelled on the AC4, all at the last minute. Tremendous stroke of bad luck; though we still have good people coming, a lot of the friends that I look forward to seeing at the even each year can’t come, and my enthusiasm for putting it together is severely diminished. I won’t be doing it again next year, which was a decision made in December but validated in the last few weeks.

I hired Jennifer O’Bryan to work on the Help Desk.

Scott Jennings is fucking amazing. And he is a fiend of the worst kind.

I’ve been working on implosion! a lot and started teaching a class for Dirty South. Zach and I talk all the time about ideas.

On the Spot had a show. I’m finding myself less motivated to coach them recently– I feel like they discard a lot of what I offer them, and while it’s certainly their perogative, I wonder if they shouldn’t just get another coach.

I feel a little lonely.